re: #128 wheat-dogghazi

In what universe is this true? The Gohmert Zone? America’s creditors — like China — are worried enough to tell Washington to straighten this mess out.

I just can’t wait until Gohmert and the rest of the Republicans figure out that the vast majority of the Department of Defense Budget is discretionary spending. If we do go into default and as they say we can service the dept to keep our credit good then guess what? It’s not entitlements like Social Security and Medicare that will be cut, because they’re mandatory, non-discretionary spending. The biggest and most obvious area for the Executive to slash costs is going to be from the military, because that’s where the bulk of the money left exists … while we still have troops in Afghanistan.

Of course most other Cabinet level department will also take huge hits, Dept of Agriculture (FDA), Health and Human Services (CDC), Justice, Homeland Security, Education, Energy, Interior … and on and on.

But if they do this there’s no way to guarantee the money flows to the military for long, sure we’ll pay the soldiers, until we can’t afford to have soldiers. New weapons systems procurements, overseas bases, domestic bases, the nuclear fleet, they’ll all have to be drastically cut down in size. None of this is what the GOP wants, but because of the way we differentiate between discretionary and non-discretionary spending the very entitlements that the GOP desperately wants to undermine are the only things actually walled off from the very disaster they’re trying to manufacture.